Irish Times Jun 23, 2020.
This country has to wake up. The whole society needs help coming to terms with the psychology of families in which there is child abuse.” Sophia McColgan said that to me in 1997, two years after her father was sentenced to 238 years in prison for multiple instances over many years of sexual and physical abuse against Sophia and some of her siblings.
1997 was the year the UN Committee on the Protection of Children slated Ireland for its failings on multiple grounds. It was also the year Kathleen O’Reilly told gardaí that her father had been raping and abusing her.
People were moved to tears watching the RTÉ interview the O’Reilly sisters gave last week after their evidence in a five-week trial last year got their brutal father, James O’Reilly, sentenced to 20 years in prison. O’Reilly had raped and abused his sister and seven of his daughters over a 23-year period. One of his daughters had given birth to a child as a result.
It was chillingly reminiscent of a litany of other notorious cases of relentless cruelty within the institution of the family in this country
Helen O’Donoghue, the eldest of the daughters, spoke of how the sexual violence had started for her at the age of four. As she spoke, urging other women suffering such violence to come forward and not be afraid, her sisters supported her, stroking her hair, hugging her and holding each other. It was devastating to hear what they had been through, beautiful to witness their loving solidarity.